Alexander’s glare cut through the parlor like winter wind.“Enough.Natalie is my mate,”he snapped,stepping between his mother and Elena.“You will not treat her this way.”
Evelyn Greyson blinked,incredulous.“Alexander,you defend an outsider over your own mother?Three years married and no pups—she’s less than a hen!Worthless.”Her voice dripped with the old breeding-house contempt of pack aristocracy.
Alexander opened his mouth,then closed it.Elena already knew the truth he could not say aloud:the child she had lost,the sickness in that night—Daniel’s complicity.She felt the old wound flare.
“Regardless,”Alexander said finally,voice hard,“you will not humiliate her.”
He reached for Elena’s hand.She yanked it away.“If you wanted a wolf who could give you pups,you should have taken one already.”
Her words landed like stones.Without meeting his mother’s eyes,Elena turned and went upstairs.
Alarm flickered in Alexander’s features;he hesitated,then started after her.A sudden cry from Rhiannon halted him.Jessica scooped the child up with an expertly performed gasp of alarm.“Rhiannon!Are you hurt?Is your heart—”
“Alexander,she startled Rhiannon.Will you come see?”Jessica’s voice trembled with practiced concern.
Alexander spun toward them,worry written across his face.He called for the family pack medic and knelt beside Rhiannon,searching the child’s small features for any sign of distress.He looked back once at the stairwell,torn;Elena had already seen too much.
What Elena could not know in the moment was the small,cruel pinch Jessica had delivered to Rhiannon’s arm as Alexander turned—an instant that would never register in his eyes as anything but genuine concern.Even if Elena had tried to tell him,he would have refused to believe it.
On the landing,Elena watched his concern for Rhiannon and felt the last thread of something like faith splinter.Back in their bedchamber she pulled every remnant of their life apart.Photographs,letters—three years of coiled promises—were swept into piles and tossed.Where he had once filled the world with vows,there was now only the echo of their old life.
She had barely begun to sit when Alexander’s hand forced the door.He stepped in and froze at the sight of the emptied shelves.“Natalie,what have you done?”
“Nothing,”she said,steady when her voice could have rattled.“Just taking away what isn’t mine.”
His expression was flat.“Bring tea to my mother.I made it.Go down.”
He shepherded her downstairs and shoved a steaming cup into her hands.Elena moved through the motion as if under water.Just as she reached for the tray,Jessica slid forward with the grace of a wolf who knows how to use attention as a knife.
“Allow me,”Jessica murmured,all sugar and predatory ease.“I’ll fetch it for her.”
Her smile was a blade.Elena stepped to intercept;their hands collided over the cup.The ceramic tipped.Tea sloshed and struck the floor.Jessica shrieked,clutching her arm as if struck,as if the silvered porcelain had left wounds.Instantly the room filled with a chorus that sided with the show:Evelyn gasped;attendants clustered;Alexander’s jaw tightened.
“Natalie,you’ve gone too far,”he said,voice rising.“Jessica was trying to help and you attacked her.”
Before Elena could explain,his hand flashed and struck her—quick,brutal judgment from the pack’s leader where mercy should have been.The sting sent her backward;her back hit the stair rail and she tasted copper.Evelyn’s thin smile widened into triumph.
“I warned you,”the matriarch intoned.“Lock her away before she disgraces us further.”
Two attendants seized Elena again,their grips trained and cold.They hauled her toward the basement storeroom as if moving a trapped cur.Alexander watched,the lines in his face closing like a snarl.He said nothing.
“Alexander,”Elena called,voice small under the weight of the cellar door,“you know I fear the dark.Will you truly let them lock me away?”
He paused at the threshold,conflict visible only for a breath,then turned his face away.“You hurt Jessica,”he said,voice clipped.“This is for order.A small punishment.”
The door thudded shut.Cold swallowed the storage room.Elena pounded until the hollowness around her took on the rhythm of a heartbeat.She curled in a corner,the world narrowing to the smell of old cedar and the distant murmur of the hearth above.Memories rose—how Alexander,once gentle in storms,had promised never to leave her in darkness.He had known.He had still let them do this.
With each sob that shook her,something inside Elena unlatched and fell away.
